"That's a big if, and it would be taking a mighty big risk," Deborah said.
"We've already taken a lot of risk just being here," Joanna said.
Deborah nodded and stared off into the darkness. Joanna was right; they'd taken more risk than they'd bargained for. But did that justify taking the irreversible risk of going to Spencer Wingate?
"Let's check out the farm,' Deborah said. "We'll keep the Spencer Wingate idea on a back burner. At the moment finding some big truck that can take us out of here seems like the best idea to me. Do you agree?"
"I agree," Joanna said. "I just think we have to consider all our options."
TO THE WOMEN’S RELIEF, THE TUNNEL ENTERED THE FARM complex the same way it left the hospital building. It ran unobstructed into a basement area where the heating pipe splintered off in multiple directions before disappearing up through the ceiling. Also like the hospital, the corridor, which was continuous with the tunnel, led to a freight elevator. But the women did not try to open the elevator doors. Instead they searched for stairs. They found a flight behind the elevator shaft.
At the door at the top of the stairs, the women paused. Deborah put her ear to it and reported back to Joanna only the quiet hum of distant machinery. After dousing the light, Deborah cracked the door slowly. The fact that they were in a barn was immediately apparent from the smell. All was quiet.
Deborah eased the door open enough to get her head through and take a look around. There was a low level of illumination from infrequently spaced bare light bulbs on the ceiling of the post-and-beam structure. Across the way, numerous stalls lined the wall three deep. To the left were a number of closed doors. In between were huge stacks of cardboard boxes, bales of hay, and sacks of animal feed.
"Well?" Joanna whispered from a few steps down the stairs. "Do you see anything?"
"There are plenty of animals in the stalls," Deborah said. "But no sign of any people, at least not yet."
Deborah opened the door and stepped out onto the hay-strewn, rough-planked floor. A few of the animals sensed her presence and grunted, bringing others to their feet. Joanna joined Deborah, and the two continued to survey the scene.
"So far so good," Deborah said. "If they have a night shift they must be sleeping."
"What a smell," Joanna said. "I can't imagine how anyone could work in this kind of environment."
"I bet it's the pigs," Deborah said. She found herself looking across the room at the beady eyes of a large pink-and-white sow. The pig seemed to be regarding her with great interest.
"Somebody told me pigs are clean," Joanna said.
"They're clean if they're kept clean," Deborah said. "But pigs don't mind being dirty, and their excrement is bad news."
"Do you see what I see on the wall behind you?" Joanna questioned. She pointed.
Deborah looked over her shoulder, and her face lit up. "A phone]"
The women dashed for the phone. Deborah got it first and put the receiver to her ear. Joanna watched her with great anticipation until Deborah's expression became one of disgust, and she hit the disconnect button several times in a row. Deborah hung up. "No deal! They've turned off the phones."
"I'm not surprised," Joanna said.
"Nor am I," Deborah admitted.
"Let's look for the truck," Joanna said.
Leaving the stairway door slightly ajar, the women skirted the animal feed and the hay and walked to the nearest door. Deborah opened it and shined in the flashlight.
"My word!" Deborah exclaimed.
"What is it?" Joanna asked, trying to see over Deborah's shoulder.
"It's another laboratory," Deborah said with amazement. She had not expected a laboratory, and the transition from a barn to super high tech over a single threshold was dizzying. The lab wasn't nearly as large as the one in the hospital but appeared to be almost equally well equipped.
Deborah let go of the door and stepped into the room. Joanna followed. Deborah moved her light from one piece of equipment to another, seeing such things as DNA sequencers, a scanning electron microscope, and polypeptide synthesizers. It was a molecular biologist's dream come true.
"Shouldn't we be looking for the truck?" Joanna asked.
"In a minute," Deborah said. She walked over to an incubator and looked in at the petri dishes. They were the same as she'd been using that day in the main lab, and she gathered they were doing nuclear transfer here as well. Then her light caught a large plate-glass window dividing a separate room off from the main part of the lab.
Deborah started back toward this room. Joanna followed to avoid being left in the dark.
"Deborah!" Joanna complained. "You're sidetracking."
"I know," Deborah said. "But every time I think I have a general picture of what they are doing at this Wingate Clinic, it turns out they are doing a lot more. I didn't expect another lab here at this farm, and certainly not one this well equipped."
"It's time for professionals,' Joanna pleaded. "We have enough information to justify a search warrant. What we have to do is get ourselves out of here."
Deborah put the lens of the flashlight directly against the plate-glass divider to avoid the glare while illuminating the room beyond. "And here's yet another surprise. This looks like a fully operational autopsy room like the ones they use for people but with a very small table. What in heaven's name is it doing in a barn?"
"Come on!" Joanna urged with growing irritation.
"Just let me check this out,' Deborah said. "It will only take a second. There's a refrigerated compartment like in a morgue."
Joanna rolled her eyes in frustration as Deborah pushed through the autopsy room's door. Joanna watched through the glass partition as Deborah walked over to the compartment and unlatched the door. Except for the light now coming back out through the glass divider from Deborah's flashlight, Joanna was in the dark. She glanced back at the door out of the lab and briefly entertained the idea of searching for a truck on her own, but she decided it was foolish without the flashlight.
Mumbling expletives, Joanna followed Deborah into the small autopsy room with the intent of demanding that Deborah come to her senses, but that goal was quickly forgotten. Deborah had the tray in the refrigerated compartment pulled out and was transfixed by what was on it. Joanna couldn't see what it was, but she could tell that Deborah was trembling by the way she held the light.
"What is it?" Joanna asked.
"Come and look!" Deborah said in a quavering voice.
"Maybe you should just tell me," Joanna said. "Remember, I'm not a biologist like you."
"You have to see this," Deborah said. "There's no way I could describe it."
Joanna swallowed nervously. She took a breath and walked over beside Deborah and made herself look down.
"Ugh!" Joanna muttered as her upper lip involuntarily pulled back in disgust. She was looking at five newborn infants with bloated umbilical vessels and extremely thick, dark lanugo. The faces were flat and broad and the eyes tiny. The noses were mere stubs with the nares oriented vertically. Their appendages ended in paddlelike extremities with minute digits. Their heads were crowned with a shock of black hair accentuated with minute but definite white forelocks.
"It's Paul Saunders clones again,' Joanna sneered.
"I'm afraid so," Deborah said. "But with a new twist. I think what he's doing down here for his stem-cell research is cloning his own cells into pig oocytes, and then gestating them in pigs."
Joanna reached out and took a hold of Deborah's arm. She needed momentary support. Deborah had been right about the Wingate Clinic. This new discovery indicated that Paul Saunders and his team were operating a quantum leap beyond the realm of reasonable or even anticipated ethics. The egotism and intellectual conceit required were simply beyond Joanna's comprehension.